Availability Control (“AVC”) refers to an oversight feature in budget control software that monitors ongoing expenditures of a business unit (an organization, department, sub-unit) and determines whether they are consistent with a budgetary plan established for that business unit. If an operator attempts to enter a transaction having an expenditure that is inconsistent with the budgetary plan, an AVC system may either block the transaction or generate online an alert within the system (perhaps an e-mail notification to a predetermined addressee) in response.
Currently available AVC systems are quite limited. SAP AG, the assignee of the present invention, currently employs an AVC oversight feature that can perform at most one defined AVC inquiry directed to a single hierarchical level within an organization. However, the inventors perceive a need in the art to expand such oversight to include implementation of multiple parallel AVC rules.